1. Technical Field
This disclosure generally relates to content management systems, and more specifically relates to a content management system that creates an object in its repository from data external to the content management system.
2. Background Art
A content management system (CMS) allows many users to efficiently share electronic content such as text, audio files, video files, pictures, graphics, etc. Content management systems typically control access to content in a repository. A user may generate content, and when the content is checked into the repository, the content may be subsequently processed by the CMS according to predefined rules. A user may also check out content from the repository, or link to content in the repository while generating content. The rules in a CMS assure that content that comes into or out of the system or that is linked to meets desired criteria specified in the rules.
Known content management systems check their rules when content comes into or out of the system. If a rule is satisfied, the CMS may perform subsequent processing on the content. Known content management systems may include rules related to bursting, linking, and synchronization. Bursting rules govern how a document is bursted, or broken into individual chunks, when the document is checked into the repository. By bursting a document into chunks, the individual chunks may be potentially reused later by a different author. Linking rules are used for importing and associating objects related to a CMS document based on particular elements or attributes from the document as specified by the rules. For example, an XML document that references external images can take advantage of linking rules so that relationships between the XML content and the external images are automatically created when the document is imported or checked into the repository. Another kind of linking rule governs what content in a repository a user may link to in a document that will be subsequently checked into the repository. Synchronization rules govern synchronization between content and metadata related to the content. For example, a synchronization rule may specify that whenever a specified CMS attribute is changed, a particular piece of XML in the content should be automatically updated with that attribute's value.
The CMS provides many features that are very convenient when working with document-centric data. In known content management systems, if data from an external source is needed, a query embedded in a document or referenced by the document is executed to retrieve the desired data into the document. Such a query is hard-coded into the document itself or in a different document referenced in the document. After the query is run, the hard-coded query in the original document is replaced with the data that was returned from the external data source. Once embedded or referenced in the document, the CMS has no knowledge that this data came from an external source. As a result, the data returned from the external data source cannot be managed as an object in the CMS. Without a way for the CMS to manage data from an external source as objects, data from external data sources will not be able to be easily reused in the CMS.